If the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, then relationships may be the straight line to happiness—at least that's what a lot of us think. There's abundant research showing meaningful social connections form one of the cornerstones of lasting joy; other studies suggest people with romantic partners experience a greater sense of well-being because commitment creates security. But oftentimes, we form unrealistic expectations of our romantic relationships, setting ourselves up for disappointment and conflict. In the early stage of love, we feel such a euphoric sense of bliss that it seems unlikely our peace will ever fade—but everything morphs over time. No feeling is permanent.
At first in a new relationship, we feel a dramatic shift in our happiness, bathed as we are in the excitement and novelty of someone's adoration and attention. Eventually we accept this new situation as the norm, what psychologists refer to as hedonic adaptation, and go back to our original happiness set point—the general level of contentment we inevitably return to regardless of what good or bad things happen to us.
Though recent studies reveal that our set points can shift over time, other people can't be solely responsible for those changes. No one person can dramatically and permanently alter how we feel on the whole. Still, it's a lot safer to blame someone else for your dissatisfaction than to acknowledge they simply masked it for a while. True to the definition of insanity—doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results—we try to shape other people into what we think they need to be to re-create our initial happiness. Or as the play title suggests, we repeatedly say, “I love you. You're perfect. Now change.”
It's not just with romantic relationships that we expect too much of people. We look to our friends and family to validate how we see the world, yet we get frustrated when they reflect things back at us that we'd rather not believe about ourselves. We look to other people to complete us, yet we feel stifled when we realize being completed by someone else is a choice to not be free. We expect people to act in our best interests, and yet in focusing on those needs, we sometimes fail to give that same selflessness in return. Relationships can get messy because they aren't just about two people existing in the same space together. They're about two people who want things from each other, when oftentimes what we really want is to get those things for ourselves.
For as long as I can remember, I assumed the answer to my happiness had something to do with other people. It was a safe conclusion when you consider my debilitating fear of everyone who wasn't me. If other people were the reason I was unhappy as well as the answer to finding greater happiness, I didn't actually have to do anything. I could just sit around counting the ways I'd been wronged, fantasizing about a type of love that would melt all memories of a painful past.
It's a tricky dichotomy, fearing people but wanting to be close to them. How can you create the possibility of love and acceptance if you block all attempts at emotional intimacy? For me, it revolved around Internet dating—the only way to fully vet a potential mate without having to meet him, open up to him, or risk disappointment or rejection. It's like people watching on the web, as remorse-free as window shopping or getting a virtual makeover.
I thought if I just saw enough pictures and read enough descriptions, I'd find what I was looking for—a soul mate, my other half—and then I wouldn't feel so empty and lonely. I knew that people always said you meet someone when you're not looking, but I wasn't willing to risk not finding. I thought the only way to complete myself was to get proactive and find the man who would do it for me. I was prepared to spend countless hours dreaming, searching, wanting, hoping, and bemoaning my single life if it meant someone else would see the good in me and give me permission to stop focusing on the bad.
In my first year in San Francisco, I decided that love was a numbers game, like telemarketing and banner ads. I went on seventeen dates from Craigslist, fifteen from eHarmony, and twenty-six from Match.com. It wasn't until my sole MySpace dating experience that I decided to reevaluate my quest for love.
Dan (name changed) lived nearby and, according to his profile, enjoyed movies, sushi, and laughing. I also enjoy movies, sushi, and laughing, so I thought we were off to a promising start. Dan was the CEO of a solar energy company—a check on my list next to “making a difference in the world.” He was tall with boyish good looks and a talent for active listening. On our first date, he nodded his head, appeared to deeply contemplate what I believed to be profound thoughts, and asked questions as if my stories intrigued him. He was less forthcoming in sharing information about himself, but his reserved aloofness was kind of charming. Perhaps it was my way of sabotaging the now to avoid hurt later, but I used to put everything out there way too soon on dates. Dan couldn't have been more different.
We had four coy, me-dominated dinner conversations before Dan told me, in the same stoic way he said everything else, that he had herpes. He may as well have been asking me to pass the salt; he was just that nonchalant. I wasn't entirely shocked. I left most dates with massive bombshells to weigh, like something out of a bad movie montage. There was the man who told me he was a priest, but he and God had an open relationship. There was the guy who wanted to lick my feet, and not just at some point, but right then, under the table. And let's not forgot the sex victim-cum-offender. (I couldn't if I tried.) I was so conditioned to expect red flags that I actually felt grateful when they were merely your garden-variety warning signs, like tales of womanizing and bachelor tendencies. As someone who frequently searched online for love, while secretly fearing I didn't deserve love, I understood that dating on the web entailed a lot of baggage sorting. And for a long time, I felt comfortable doing it. I thought I was less likely to be judged and hurt by men who'd probably felt those things many times before.
I could feel in my bones how painful it must have been to disclose his disease, knowing full well that many women would recoil in anger and possibly repulsion. Though I somewhat hesitated to set a precedent for physical closeness, my inner Florence Nightingale took over, tossing my arms around him. He said I was the first woman who didn't yell at him, hit him, or otherwise imply that he was somehow dirty or damaged. Since I hadn't put myself at risk, I felt worse for him than I did for me. I had an imploded fantasy of a future with a handsome, successful man who let me ramble about myself, but he had an incurable disease and an uphill battle if he was determined to date within the STD-free population.
Though our relationship was clearly limited, I told him to pick me up the following Friday at seven. Since I knew we'd have tons of time to simply talk, without the usual pressure to get physical, I felt open to developing this unconventional relationship. Underneath that justification was an even sadder belief: I wasn't sure I could attract a man who could give me everything I wanted. After all, I was part of the Internet dating crowd—not a dabbler, but a card-carrying member—and I came with an overflowing baggage cart. At least he would support me emotionally, I thought. And he'd be too grateful for my support to hurt me.
Over the next month, we fell into a routine of hanging out and watching movies, like an old married couple after the romance has long since gone. Our differences were like night and day. I have the kind of energy that manifests in rambling and leg twitching; he's about as lively as a houseplant with a poker face à la Stanley from The Office. I'm a creative type who believes in following my bliss; he's an entrepreneur who, as I slowly learned, believes money heals all wounds. I have a bleeding heart that constantly drips down my sleeve; he's about as emotional as a mainframe. I wondered what it felt like not to feel—to think of everything rationally, see everything in dollars and cents instead of bouncing from emotion to emotion. I imagined he was probably a lot happier, and yet I still wanted to change him. An apathetic joy couldn't possibly be right—not in general, and definitely not for me.
Three months into our G-rated dating, I started talking about wanting to do something meaningful online through my first blog, Seeing Good, which would be about expecting and seeing the best things in life instead of fearing and finding the worst. I was just starting to understand how profoundly an attitude adjustment can change the world I experience. My idea was to create a blog about positive thinking that would give 50 percent of the ad revenue back to the readers through a monthly drawing. I thought it would be a wonderful way to spread a positive message while doing a positive thing for subscribers. I could earn just enough, and give the rest away. That was something I could feel good about.
When I told Dan my idea, while he was searching through pay channels for yet another movie, he shared his feelings in a way he had never done before. “It won't work,” he said. “You might feel all warm and fuzzy when you write it, but no one will care enough to come back and create substantial revenue. People just aren't as good and caring as you think they are. Most people are selfish—and you're no different.”
That's when I recoiled—honestly, in anger and repulsion. How could he possibly think that way about people, and about me? What hope is there in life if you don't eventually find a light in yourself and recognize that same light in other people? Maybe he was just trying to hurt me. Maybe he was frustrated by our platonic closeness. Maybe he sensed that I was using him to fill a void in myself. Or maybe Occam's razor was ringing true again: maybe he said those things because he meant them. He had a right to, just as I had a right not to.
We could both see things completely differently without either of us being wrong. It just meant we were wrong for each other. I'd known for a while that our relationship, pseudo romance, friendship, whatever, would have a limited shelf life, and yet I dragged it out anyway. It was easier to stick with something that probably wouldn't be fulfilling, trying to smash a square peg into a round hole, than to let go and risk not finding something better. A bad romance felt better than none at all.
That's when I formed three conclusions that forever changed how I viewed relationships: First, I would never attract the right person if I wasn't willing to become the woman he deserved. Second, if I wanted to feel complete in a relationship, I had to complete myself first. And third, if I wanted to be in a relationship that was right, I had to be in it for the right reasons.
Though I have been in a mutually satisfying relationship for the last two years, I am by no means an expert—and maintaining the satisfaction is by no means easy. So long as we can see other people and feel, we will be tempted to create connections between the two, sometimes with good reason, and other times without. We will expect things, want things, try to change things, try to force things, say harsh things, and inevitably regret things. We'll pull close sometimes and push away at others. We'll feel suspicious at times and trusting at others.
It's impossible to be part of a relationship that is completely without friction, and to some extent, that's healthy, if we've chosen to be with people who are good for us. If we handle conflict well, we can challenge each other, strengthen each other, and grow closer to each other. In understanding what creates those conflicts, we can best plan to deal with them well. With that in mind I asked on Twitter, “Why are relationships hard?”
Relationships are reflections of how we see ourselves. Getting to know yourself is not easy. ∼@Matt_Arguello
Relationships show us our shadow. For most of us, it's painful to see and be with. ∼@lisadelrio
Relationships are hard because they never live up to our unrealistic ideals, and because they expose our insecurities. ∼@amanofpeace
In relationships, you come face to face with yourself. ∼@chancebuddhism
Relationships can be hard because they mirror the unresolved within, and confront parts of you which you could otherwise avoid resolving. 7sim;@Falcongriffith
Everything you see outside yourself is a reflection of what's going on inside. When you're angry, you notice insensitive, rude people. When you're rushed, life seems to move at a glacial pace just to get in your way. Relationships are just more persistently uncomfortable because the mirror moves.
In his book Free to Love, Free to Heal, Deepak Chopra outlined seven principles that help us feel love more freely, the first addressing this very idea. He explains that when there is dissonance in a relationship, it serves us best to look inside ourselves and question what we can do to address it. If we're looking for more attention and appreciation, perhaps we could be more attentive and appreciative. That's not to say we shouldn't communicate what we want and need. It's just that oftentimes we get frustrated trying to change other people when it's far more empowering to make a change within ourselves—and as a natural consequence, to manifest change in the world around us.
Mirroring isn't just about being the change we want to see. Sometimes we see in other people what we hold within our own hearts but would prefer to deny. It's not always easy to acknowledge our weaknesses, but that doesn't mean we're not aware subconsciously, and that doesn't mean we won't eventually recognize them. Sometimes it's easier to notice them in someone else—whether they're actually there or not. Psychologists talk about projecting, the act of denying our own traits and then ascribing them to another person. It's a defense mechanism that allows us to avoid accepting qualities or thoughts we'd rather not have. Sigmund Freud explained that projection helps us minimize guilt since it allows us to avoid owning an undesirable trait.
People project onto each other all the time. A competitive friend of mine once asked me if I suspected everyone who knew me wanted me to fail in life—that other people were jealous and felt threatened by any successes I had. Knowing her as well as I did, I couldn't help but wonder if this was an unintentional confession that she actually felt that way. I was equally guilty. The second she said it I projected selfishness onto her, when that was really my biggest fear about myself.
Getting mindful about mirroring and projection is one of the healthiest things we can do for our relationships, but our egos aren't always thrilled about our challenging of ourselves. If our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings make up our identities, any insinuation that they should change immediately feels threatening. How can you consider changing what you think if you believe that you are your thoughts? Changing them would be like death. How can you acknowledge your weaknesses if you suspect they have to define you? Recognizing them would be tantamount to labeling yourself damaged.
Or maybe not. Maybe being honest with ourselves and taking responsibility for our feelings toward other people can be ultimately empowering. When you consider that what you see in other people lives somewhere in you, you also open yourself up to the possibility of noticing beauty you never knew you had. In yoga, we always end class with the Sanskrit word namaste, which means, “The light in me honors the light in you.” Just like we can see the less appealing parts of ourselves in other people, we can identify the good as well. Everything we see in others, we have within ourselves somewhere. If you envy someone who is brave, know that you have the ability to be brave, too. If you're fascinated by someone who is selfless, know that you have that same selflessness locked inside you. We are all made of the same stuff, and we all have the same potential to make both mistakes and miracles. The only differences between us revolve around where we focus our attention and what we choose to do.
That being said, it's admittedly a lot easier to own a positive trait than it is a negative one. It's why parents frequently take credit for the good things their kids do and assume the bad comes from their spouse's side of the family. No one wants to identify with a negative behavior—in turn, we end up judging other people's actions out of fear of acknowledging we are just like them. When we reject someone else, refusing to muster compassion, what we're really doing is responding to them in the way we'd respond to ourselves: harshly and shamefully.
My current relationship is the first long-term one I've been in since college, meaning I casually dated for nearly a decade. Ehren is kind, selfless, likeable, carefree, and wise beyond his years. It seems to me that it isn't a coincidence I am suddenly in a healthy relationship with an admirable person after I chose to start actively being the person I want to be. I simply couldn't see good in someone else or be good for him until I felt good about who I was. I couldn't learn to give someone the benefit of the doubt instead of suspecting he meant to hurt me until I stopped believing I deserved to hurt. There is a direct correlation between what we feel and what we see, and the two are always in flux. When you realize that everyone has darkness and light, and accept yourself for both, you're better equipped to embrace other people as they are, without the weight of your guilt or fears. More simply put: only when you're able to be kind and loving to yourself can you give and receive the same to and from someone else.
If you find yourself feeling angry and judgmental toward someone you love:
Before you judge, ask yourself if you hold the quality that you're judging. Maybe you suspect your boyfriend of cheating because you're a flirty person and you assume he's doing the same. Or perhaps you think your wife's lazy, and it really bothers you because your father always called you lazy. Recognize that you hold the quality, and how you feel when you acknowledge that you do. Odds are the anger isn't coming from what the other person did or may do—it's how you feel about owning that trait.
Address the feelings beneath what you're projecting. If you're projecting something you feel guilty about, either fess up or change your choices so that you don't continue to feel so conflicted and suspicious. If you're projecting something that you don't like about yourself, offer yourself a little compassion and forgiveness so that you'll be able to offer the same to someone else who embodies that trait. So long as you feel shame over a quality, you will recognize and vehemently oppose it in others. The only way to accept other people and give them the love they deserve is to first accept and love yourself.
Ask yourself every day how you can create the image you'd like to reflect. If you want a significant other who is independent, caring, considerate, and brave, decide to nurture those qualities in yourself every day. Make self-care a priority. Consistently reach out to the people you love to let them know you're there for them. Most likely they will reciprocate—and with much more joy and less resentment than if you badgered them. And if they don't return this same love-inaction, because you're proud of who you are, you'll likely feel healthy and strong enough to walk away, open and receptive to better matches.
Relationships are hard because we often seek from others what we are not giving ourselves. ∼@arvinddevalia
It is easy to forget that you must continue to love yourself. ∼@anibunny
Sometimes we expect others to fill the emptiness that only we can fill ourselves. ∼@nhweas
Relationships are hard because we worry about what we can get from them instead of what we can give. ∼@unjordi
It is hard to have but not to hold too tightly—to enjoy closeness without the trap of attachment to the closeness. ∼@SevenZark
When Jerry Maguire said, “You complete me,” he set romantic hearts aflutter around the world, perpetuating an unhealthy idea that we can somehow fill voids within each other. Tom Cruise can't take total credit for creating this codependent fantasy. The Greek philosopher Plato explored the idea in The Symposium between 385 and 380 BCE, suggesting the primal humans had both male and female parts but Zeus split them into two separate bodies. From that point on, the two halves were destined to search for each other—their “split apart” or soul mate—to become whole again.
The belief that somewhere in the world there is one perfect match for each of us feels much more special than the suggestion that we could be with any number of compatible people, if we choose to nurture long-term relationships. We don't want to think of finding love like choosing a job—discovering something that feels right and then doing the work. We want to think of love as something fated to make life require less work. We want to think of it as something profound, otherworldly, divine, even. We want our attraction to feel deeply spiritual, not rational or biological, so the comfort of codependence will seem less taboo and more enlightened.
Incomplete people can't possibly create a balanced relationship because they will always need to lean on each other. A friend of mine once suggested that people are like glasses of water. We have to come to each other already full or else one person will have to empty some of her glass into the other to even things out—but then you're both lacking, constantly filling each other to make up for your combined deficiencies. As someone who walked around one-fourth full for most of my life, desperately seeking three-fourths of my happiness, I can personally attest that it's nearly impossible to be satisfied in a relationship if you aren't already satisfied outside of it.
An old friend of mine I'll call Jade labeled herself a “consummate relationship girl.” She was the polar opposite of my serial-dating twenties self. She was always coupled in a committed situation, and she rarely ended one without having the next lined up. If I would have asked Jade to describe herself, she'd have rattled off a list of labels that all revolved around being with someone else: nurturing, supportive, loving, dependable. It's almost as if she didn't exist unless she was in relation to another person. That's not to say the labels we put on ourselves necessarily have to define us. It's just that what we experience is a consequence of where we focus our attention. If we never cultivate our independent self, we won't have a lot to offer another person, other than selflessness with expectations of reciprocity.
That's what happened every time with Jade. She had a very clear idea of what another person should provide her, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. She gave all of herself, sacrificed indiscriminately, planned for the future after only a few dates, and eventually found herself feeling empty when that person didn't fulfill her needs. Sometimes he wanted to, but simply couldn't—like when her longterm boyfriend died in his early thirties. It would have been tragic for anyone who loved him, regardless of level of attachment. But it was different for Jade. She didn't lose a part of herself in the figurative way, as we all do when someone we love disappears from our lives. She said that her life meant nothing after his death, and she didn't think she could live without him—which all changed a month later when she entered her next long-term relationship. Her earlier words were telling: her life had no meaning unless she was part of a couple.
The irony in defining ourselves through other people is that we're more apt to experience happiness in relationships if we're true to ourselves—which means we have to have a strong idea of who we are autonomously. There is nothing as liberating as authenticity, which is why we get comfortable in environments, jobs, and roles. The freedom to be unabashedly genuine provides much more peace than the suspicion we have to pretend we're something we're not. If you define yourself through an attachment to someone else, it's not always easy to know where you stop and he begins. How can you be true to your beliefs if you're willing to shape-shift to ensure you don't split apart again?
People often talk about getting married as if it's the answer to lasting happiness, and yet we all know countless married couples who have grown bitter and distant through the years. Our expectations set us up for disappointment because a bond with someone else can never fill the cracks in our own happiness. As Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert said at the 2010 American Psychological Association convention, “It's not marriage that makes you happy. It's happy marriage that makes you happy.” Happy people are more apt to create happy marriages.
And whole people are more apt to feel whole in relationships. So the real question here is: what does it mean—and what does it take— to feel whole?
If you feel like you need to be in a relationship to be complete:
Choose to do what you want to do today, whether you're single or in a relationship. If you're single, establish all the things that you've been waiting to do with a partner and then do them now—go on that vacation or enroll in that cooking class. Strive to become the kind of person who would complement, not complete, your future significant other. If you're in a relationship, make it a priority to do a little something you enjoy without your partner every day, whether it's taking a morning walk or going to lunch with friends. The goal is for your relationship to be part of your life, not all of it.
Practice daily self-love. And I'm referring to your authentic self—not just the self that most people see every day. Take time to write in a journal, or write music, or do whatever you can to acknowledge your feelings and accept and love yourself just as you are—light and dark. All too often, we depend on other people to make us feel okay about the less flattering parts of our personalities. Give yourself the validation you're hoping to get from someone else. Love yourself because of, not in spite of, your flaws.
Take the halo off your partner. If you feel like this is your one chance at love—that your significant other is your ultimate destiny—you will put a ton of pressure on the relationship, and also keep yourself feeling a sense of cosmic codependence. Remember that you have lots of relationships, and even if this one is special, there are lots of other special ones with friends and family members that you need to nurture. You may be great and happy in this relationship, but if it ended, you could also be great and happy outside of it.
Relationships are hard because we expect them to be easy. ∼@kolormyworld06
Relationships are hard because we put so much pressure not just on the relationship but the person we are with. ∼@Ms_CRivera
When we bury our loved ones under the burden of our expectations, at that time our relationship stops breathing. ∼@kumudinni
We think our partner should be perfect but give ourselves a lot of room for error. ∼@karawow
We always try to change the other party according to our own idea about them. ∼@mayasaputra
Positive people expect the best, as opposed to their negative counterparts, who expect the worst so they'll be pleasantly surprised if something good happens. Neither of these attitudes leads to healthy relationships. In his August 26, 2010, post on PsychologyToday.com, Mark D. White referred to expectations as the other side of obligations, and suggested that both of them signal problems in a relationship. If we communicate our needs well, we should want to meet each other's out of love and appreciation, not obligation, and we shouldn't necessarily form expectations of what that love and appreciation will look like because that isn't very loving or appreciative.
White ended his post by saying this may be a naïve and overly romantic simplification; perhaps it is, but there's something to this idea. Most of the time, when there's conflict in a relationship, it's because one person didn't meet the other's expectations. From the moment when we first meet someone else, we start forming them if not consciously, subconsciously.
First there's the idealism expectation: we'll somehow complete each other. Since it just isn't possible to give someone else what he hasn't given himself, this is our choice to eventually feel disillusioned with love. Then there are past-driven expectations: our relationships will look like the best that's come and gone and nothing like the worst. Every new relationship is different, and a new partner can't possibly be responsible for what happened before. A new boyfriend shouldn't have to pay for an old one's infidelity; a new girlfriend shouldn't have to like PDA because an old one would make out everywhere from traffic court to the dentist's office. After that, there's the infinite-euphoria expectation: the honeymoon-phase high will last, and if it doesn't, something must be wrong. It isn't—in fact, it's more likely something is wrong if you never feel comfortable enough around each other for your relationship to seem at least somewhat unexciting.
This is just the tip of the expectation iceberg, but the rest of it offers more of the same: expecting our significant others to cause us pleasure and not pain—even if we are actually responsible for feeling pain because of the way we translate what happens. If you always sacrifice for your husband and he doesn't do the same for you, you may assume he doesn't care enough to put in the same effort. But maybe his behavior doesn't mean that at all; it could just mean he didn't realize you were overextending yourself to get something specific in return. If you have a passion that you wish your girlfriend shared, you may feel bitter whenever she doesn't join you, assuming she doesn't care about your interests. But maybe it only means she respects herself enough to honor what's right for her and assumes you would do the same.
The most damaging expectation of all is that other people are somehow responsible for our feelings. For the longest time, I was caught in a vicious cycle: I ignored my own needs until I exploded on some undeserving person, blaming him for all the emotions I had stuffed down for weeks prior. I'd ignore what I wanted to please other people, put their needs above my own to make them like me, fail to set boundaries, and generally expect that other people would make sure our relationships were worth my effort. After a couple weeks of martyrdom, I would feel frustration, anger, resentment, disappointment, and sadness bubble up inside me, but I'd have no idea what caused them. It would be like a tidal wave of emotion, with blotchy eyes, heaving sobs, and chest convulsions.
It was far easier to point fingers at everyone around me than it was to consider I'd caused this tsunami of angst. It was my friend's fault I was so upset—she only called me when she needed something and never really cared how I was doing. It wasn't that I chose to overextend myself in helping her and rarely asked her for what I needed. Or it was my boyfriend's fault that I was upset—he didn't work as hard as I did, which put a lot of pressure on me. It wasn't that I chose to say yes to every request and overwhelmed my schedule. If someone else was responsible for my emotion overload, it was no longer my sole burden to carry. What I didn't consider is that when we burden someone else, we take away our power to change our own feelings, and we also compromise a relationship that could help evoke positive ones.
Now when I'm feeling something uncomfortable that I can't identify, I look for reasons rooted in my own choices. Sometimes I still need things from my family and friends, but the responsibility for changing my feelings starts with me and what I choose to say and do. The same is true for all of us.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't have any expectations of people. In her book 5 Simple Steps to Take Your Marriage from Good to Great, Terri Orbuch highlights the difference between realistic and unrealistic expectations. While it's unrealistic to suggest that if you love each other, your passion will never fade, it is realistic to expect that if you take time to communicate with each other, you can prevent unnecessary drama later. It's also realistic to expect that if someone loves you, she is generally doing the best she can; if you need more than what you're getting, so long as it's not unreasonable, she will make every effort to give it. Of course, that also starts with you—whether or not you choose to acknowledge what you need, express it clearly, and then give back out of love, not obligation.
If you feel like your expectations aren't being met:
Ask for what you need and expect nothing more. This doesn't mean your loved ones won't do things for you without you needing to ask for them specifically—it just means they will know to do the things that are important, and the rest will be icing on the cake. If you enjoy getting flowers at work, ask your boyfriend if he'd surprise you with them sometime in the next month because it really makes your day. If you want your girlfriend to spend more time with your family, tell her it's important to you and see how she feels about it. You can reasonably expect only what you're willing to ask for.
Do what you need to do for you. Everyone has personal needs, whether it's going to the gym after work or taking some alone time on Saturday morning. If someone asks you to do something and your instinct is to honor you own need, do that. Anything you would expect a partner to do for you—love you, understand you, take care of you: make sure that you are actively doing those things for yourself every day. If you don't take care of yourself, you will likely form even stronger expectations of your partner because there will be such a large void to fill.
Create an environment of thoughtfulness. Oftentimes when relationships grow, the little things fall to the wayside. Both sides resent that, and neither makes the proactive choice to re-create that same thoughtfulness. Set the tone for the relationship you want. If you expect small gestures of love and support, make a point to start offering them. You're not giving to be able to then expect these same things in return—rather, you're taking responsibility for being in the kind of relationship where these things come more naturally to both of you.
Relationships involve people and people are universes. Can you imagine universes colliding? ∼@uno_br
Everyone is a little nuts in their own way and few people acknowledge this. Recognize the mixed nuts of humans. ∼@TangoKarnitz
Relationships are hard because each person's perception is uniquely theirs, and they react from this place of perception. ∼@SuliloByDebbie
Relationships require conscious effort and a diminished ego, both difficult in autonomous individualistic societies. ∼@spitzmpa
Relationships are hard because they mean so much. Two people can't always be on the same page. Our uniqueness is beautiful and challenging. ∼@NikkiFaith
Most of us guard our perceptions of the world for dear life. In his book Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, Chris Frith, a professor of cognitive neurology, explains that how we see the world is largely a product of interpretations based on memories of the past. Since we all have different backgrounds, none of us sees things exactly the same as does another, and we tend to associate ourselves with the understandings we've developed—as if those perceptions make up our identities. When the future unfolds as we expected based on the ideas we formed, we feel a sense of security; when the outside world fails to corroborate what we think we know, we feel threatened. It's almost as if we don't know who we are when the external world doesn't authenticate us.
That's why most of us align ourselves with friends who see things the same way we do; these are the people who “get” us. This isn't as relevant for our weak ties—the term sociologists use to define our acquaintances, colleagues, and other loose connections. But in our strong, intimate relationships, we expect that other people will consistently confirm our views and, in doing so, validate us. When they don't seem to get us, or don't act in accordance with our ideas of how things should work, that's when trouble starts—and usually we assume we're right and someone else is wrong.
It's also why we often believe we were right even after it's clear we weren't. Psychologists refer to this as hindsight bias—when we assume we knew something before we learned it or could have predicted something before it happened, even though we didn't. David McRaney, who authors a blog called You Are Not So Smart: A Celebration of Self-Delusion, wrote an interesting post about this idea in which he cited two research studies about older people. One revealed that they don't accept new information well, just like an old dog can't learn new tricks, and the other suggested that elderly people, equipped with years or wisdom, tend to complete college degrees quicker than young people who have brains that aren't completely formed. Then McRaney dropped the bombshell: he actually made both of those studies up, and yet they both appeared to offer common-sense conclusions that we might assume we already knew. We generally revise our past beliefs to feel secure in the knowledge we were, at least on some level, right.
Back in college, I had a friend who had to be right about everything and was willing to create excruciating drama with friends and relatives to ensure they agreed with her. Let's call her Jessica. It started with little absolutes, like putting the toilet paper on a certain way or taking a specific route on the road, and extended into major things, like religion and politics. Being around Jessica was exhausting because I never knew when she'd cross-examine me to find cracks in my beliefs. I understood her insecurity because I felt equally threatened when other people didn't agree with me; I was just passive-aggressive in my coercion because I was desperate to get other people's approval.
We had a major falling out at the end of our freshman year because I decided to re-audition for the acting program after originally being rejected. She had already auditioned a second time and failed to make the cut. After that, she decided no one should bother re-auditioning because it was impossible to get in if you didn't before your freshman year. She spent two weeks trying to convince me not to try—first overtly and then subtly when I made it clear I wasn't giving up. I guessed that it would be difficult on her ego to challenge that belief she'd formed, but I wasn't willing to just accept her conclusion without finding out for myself. When I got accepted into the program, she altered her deduction. It was no longer true that no one could become an acting major as a sophomore; it was just that she was Spanish and the head of the program was a racist—which she said she'd suspected all along.
On some level, we all get attached to our ideas—ideas about what's good and what's bad, ideas about how other people should act, and ideas about how people should respond to us. When other people don't fall in line, we think ourselves into anxiety. We know what beliefs feel safe, and we'd often rather be miserable than risk compromising them. We'd rather fight the people we love, forcing them to deal with the discomfort of admitting they are wrong than consider that maybe no one is wrong—we just see things differently. Or maybe we are, in fact, wrong, and if we consider that possibility, we can gain new knowledge and actually be right in the future.
If we can accept that we are not our perceptions, and if we look objectively at our stress when we feel the need to fight for them, our relationships can be far more peaceful. It won't always be easy—it's instinctive to respond to the world based on what we've learned before and what makes us feel secure. A good way to challenge this impulse is to question: what's more important—being right or being happy? If you value the person you're inclined to fight and it doesn't hurt you or your relationship to avoid an argument that your ego wants to have, agree to disagree and move on. Letting go of an idea doesn't have to deconstruct you if it allows you to better understand and accept someone you love. And in the end, that's what keeps our relationships alive and well: a commitment to understanding and loving each other more often than we fear and fight each other.
If you find yourself fighting over beliefs or ideas:
Choose your battles. On the one hand, you have to tell people when there's something bothering you. That's the only way to address problems. On the other hand, you don't have to let everything bother you. If you're not sure if this is something worth bringing up, ask yourself: Does this happen often and leave me feeling bad? Will this really matter in the grand scheme of things? Can I empathize with their feelings instead of dwelling on my insecurity?
Get to the root of the situation. On the surface, you might be fighting over money, but there may be other feelings underneath the actual issue—in fact, there may even be residual feelings from another event fueling this conversation. Stop and ask yourself and the other person: what's the real issue here?
Challenge the urge to lay out your evidence. We all become armchair lawyers when it comes to defending what we believe is right—and sometimes that means we are formulating our evidence instead of really listening to what someone else is saying. Decide that you won't interrupt and that instead you'll listen with an open mind. You can hear someone out without having to adopt her beliefs. Simply hear them out. Decide that it's more important to be in a relationship where both people feel heard and respected than in a relationship where both constantly fight to be right.
Get comfortable saying, “Let's agree to disagree.” People with different backgrounds will naturally see things differently sometimes. Neither of you need to be wrong. This is a choice to maintain what feels right for you without having to invalidate what feels right for someone you love. If it's something that you need to form some type of consensus on—like how to raise your children or what to do with an inheritance—focus on meeting in the middle. It's not about one of you getting what you want; it's about finding a mutually agreeable solution. It's about loving and respecting each other enough that you want to meet halfway. And if you don't legitimately want that, then it's about letting go and opening up to the right relationship—one where happiness together will feel more important than self-righteousness alone.